I grew up in Queens, NY. From my house in Howard Beach, Queens you could see the Twin Towers. I had just awoke and showered and gone upstairs to say good morning to my grandfather and grandmother. We believed the first tower was an accident. Maybe an errant plane had gone off course; perhaps a pilot had fallen asleep my grandmother deduced. Then the second plane and we knew. We just knew. At that point, panic set in around the city. I actually called my boss and he decided we would open for business. On my way to work and all traffic had stopped. The world stopped. Life - stopped. It looked akin to a scene from Independence Day when people just stood outside their cars staring at the billowing smoke from across the tiny Howard Beach bridge into the city. How many places on Earth can be referred to as "the city"? How grand in stature must a city be to have earned that title?
I can't sit here and say I volunteered at the WTC, but what I did do was encounter several people who had to walk over the Brooklyn and 59th Street (Queensborough) bridge and gave them rides home since they didn't have their vehicles. All of them were covered in debris and soot. Two I remember were actually employees in the WTC.
New Yorkers, we are a proud bunch. We believe in our city. Most of us treat where we are from like a badge of honor; as if it were a nationality or ethnicity. We're not Italians or Americans or anything else. We're New Yorkers. That should sum it up. It's as if the culture of the city was sewn into the fabric of who are are. September 11th just reaffirmed that pride in our city. No city or group of people could've responded the way New York did. I was and still am proud to be from New York, but never more than on that day.
I just took my wife and three children to see the new Freedom Tower at One World Trade and explained to them the significance. Explained to them that daddy was here and saw it all and would tell them again some day about those brave men and women who died so other's could be afforded the opportunity to live. Those brave FDNY and NYPD soldiers who gave their lives. It has become somewhat of a slogan or "catchphrase" but it's appropriate -- Never Forget. I never will.